Via: Online MBA

Last night I met with a local entrepreneur and one of the first things we talked about was his white board. He recently moved his startup into a new office and they needed some for brainstorming. The cheapest large white boards he could find were $300 and understandably he found that too much. So what to do? He went over to Home Depot and found HUGE white laminated particle boards for around $10 and screwed them onto the walls. Yeah, they’re not as shiny or perfect as the $300 ones, but for less than $100 he was able to outfit his entire office. And they work just as well.

It’s really important to note that he has enough funding, but instead he’s focused on more important uses. Like developing his product. He’s willing to spend the money where it counts, not where it looks good. We’ve all heard about startups that get funding and then go and spend on stuff they don’t really need and doesn’t help build the product. And then they fail. Coincidence?

Be lavish where it counts, but be frugal everywhere else. At least until you’re profitable…

When used properly, Social Media can be a huge asset to any organization but most people just jump in without knowing why. When Facebook became popular companies joined because everyone else was on it. Same goes for twitter and dozens of other tools. The problem comes after a few months and the sites get abandoned for lack of engagement. Then the business says that Social Media doesn’t work. Businesses wouldn’t just jump into a new business strategy and hope for the best, so why do it with Social Media?

Learn

Social Media is not understood well and evolves everyday. It’s not about what you’re using, but how. If all you do on Facebook is blast out ads you can’t get upset when nobody follows you. You have to engage your customers and do so consistently. A company blog that solicits customer comments and responds if far more social than a twitter account that just posts information. Social Media at it’s heart is about listening and engaging with your audience over a long period of time. It’s about creating relationships and that takes time. Anyone who wants success needs to first understand this before doing anything online.

You need to understand who you’re customers are and where they hang out. If it’s not Facebook don’t create a account there. At best you’ll have a lonely page and at worst you’ll have an abandoned page (and it never goes away). The same goes for Twitter, MySpace and any other social site including your company blog.

Read some books: Trust Agents, Twitterville, Socialnomics (just to name a few)

Read some blogs: Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Jay Baer.

Feel free to disagree with everything you learn but it’s a good idea to know what other’s are saying. See if you can apply it to your situation, if not it may help you figure out what would work.

Listen

Create a listening station so you know what people are saying about you. The following post is available from Chris Brogan (here).

1. Get a gmail account. – http://www.gmail.com
2. Log in to Google Reader. This will become your home base for listening. Note the position of the “Add Subscriptions” button (mid top left) – http://www.google.com/reader
3. Now, go to Google Blogsearch. Type in your query about your company, your organization, your competitors, and the like. We’ll use the results in the next step. – http://blogsearch.google.com.
4. Note the “Subscribe” links on the bottom left of the page. Right-click the RSS link, and select copy.
5. Go back to Google Reader, click Add Subscription, and select paste.
6. Repeat this for as many variations of searches you want for blogs.
7. UPDATE: I hear this feature is going away. You can do the same thing at IceRocket, if so, just do this step at Icerocket instead of Technorati. Go to Technorati. Perform the same queries there. Neither Google nor Technorati finds it all, so cross-posting works. – http://www.technorati.com
8. Go to Twitter Search. Do the same. – http://search.twitter.com
9. Fine tune your searches by seeing what inaccurate results come from your first attempts, and replace bad searches with better ones.
10. Take the payload of all that raw searching and SORT it using Google Reader. By this, I mean the following: when you find something to note, either Share it (Shift S), or email it to a core team ( type E on the keyboard). Send only the important stuff. Then, let internal employees see the RSS feed of the shared items, or just use the email feature. Whichever works best. This is how you sort the larger pile of info into the smaller and more useful packets that your organization can consume.
11. Most important to the process – DO something with what you’re learning. Figure out the business value of the listening you’re doing, and route it to the right places. Listening isn’t for marketers. It’s for the organization. It’s for customer service, for product management, for the senior team, etc.

Engage

Once you know who your customers are, where they hang out and what they’re saying about you….then you can engage. Don’t worry about talking to everyone, start out by talking to one or two. Once you’ve gotten in the habit of talking and it’s part of your daily routine, find more people and talk to them. And by talk I don’t mean tell them about your products or specials. Find out about their problems and how you can help them. Offer advice that has nothing to do with your business. If you’re a wedding planner, offer a stressed out bride some wedding tips. If you’re a florist offering some advice on picking and arranging the right flowers. You might not get a sale but you’ll get something better, their attention and trust.

Just keep doing that, it’s that simple.*

* No really, it is. Yes it takes time and energy and the willingness to talk as opposed to advertise. Customers are bombarded with more ads then ever and it’s easier then ever to tune them out. Have a conversation, you’ll be surprised where it leads.

Via: Online Schools

Via: Online Schools

“It undermines unthinking respect for centralized authority, whether that “authority” is the neatly homogenized voice of broadcast advertising or the smarmy rhetoric of the corporate annual report.”

-The Cluetrain Manifesto

These words seemed prophetic when written in 2000 but now seem quite obvious to anyone whose been online for more than a month. It’s the major reason businesses large and small find it difficult to be online and many of them have done so only because they believe it necessary for basic survival.  Prior to “the Internet” it was difficult to communicate with large groups of people or to find like minded individuals. This was good for business as they became the gate keepers.

But now those gates are wide open and chaos has run rampant, or so it would seem. We now care more about what our peers are doing and saying than what the latest ad is promoting. For good and bad it’s easier for customers to voice their opinion. It doesn’t help that business was late to the game and is now playing catch up. Like anything, Social Media requires experimentation and risks. Both of which many companies have a hard time trying.

Maybe they could use a little sedition themselves?

Photo by philippe leroyer

Most of us get pretty nervous when presenting and can’t wait to get it over with. This probably triggers a fight or flight response the instant we’re questioned about a statement or assertion we made. I saw some of this during my business class this week and I was even guilty of it myself.

The culmination of our class was a five minute presentation in front a panelist of judges and we all pitched our idea for feedback. Many of the comments were insightful but were sometimes met with some kind of defense. It’s easy to take it personally after investing  so much time and effort, but it really isn’t personal.

Often times the questioner would ask about the market size or an assumption and the speaker would go on in detail about why they were right. First, the crowd usually wants the presenter to succeed and becoming defensive can quickly change that. Second, the point of getting feedback is to find out what others think especially if they have particular expertise. You can’t do that if you spend most of the time talking.

Instead, thank them for the comment. Even if you think they’re completely wrong or “don’t get it” they’re taking their time to give you some advice. Spend time reflecting on it before dismissing it. Plus, if they don’t get it is it really their fault or yours?

Photo by Philippe Leroyer

One of the fringe benefits of being unemployed is I get to do cool stuff with my time when not looking for a job. This week I was invited to attend a SuperCoach Entrepreneur training session by Sharon Ballard. Think a business bootcamp for non business people, typically engineers and scientists. Four glorious days of studying marketing, sales, revenue projections, balance statements operations and anything else an budding entrepreneur might need. Four days, 8 hours a day=awesome.

It hit me half way into day 1 that I had the overwhelming urge to tweet the nuggets of gold I was learning. To write blog posts about all the awesome stuff I’m learning, which I will once my homework is done. I’ld actually get distracted thinking about how to share what I’m learning, as I’m learning it (thanks twitter).

No one else had this compulsion, and yes people had their laptops open. Partly many were wrapped up in the class (so was I) and it is proprietary content, yet I doubt it even occurred to others to even share. 

Contrast this with the Social Media class I’m taking and it’s the complete opposite. We’re practically expected to tweet during class, yeah it’s that cool. I’m quickly realizing the power of Social Media. It’s the ability to share cool stuff as it’s happening with hundreds and thousands of people. 

There is no way I would stand up in front of a crowd that size, but I’ll send a few tweets, write a blog post or create a video hoping to get that much exposure. 

My name is Stephen and I’m a Social Media Junkie.

Anyone else?

Photo by Pieter Baert

Social Media junkies talk about the latest ideas in blogs, Twitter, Facebook, content management, and a host of other areas in which we all play. 

Our goal will be to great a big list of areas for everyone to go explore, and it will be even more audience participation than usual. We will try to capture as many of the great ideas as we can for a post after the session.

Moderator:
Jeff Moriarty, Director of Social Media Strategy – Sitewire/Chair – Social Media Club Phoenix, @jmoriarty

Panelists:
Kevin Gawthrope, Sr. Manger of Web Services – Isagenix International, @gawthrok
Katie Van Domelen, Social Media Manager – Off Madison Ave, @ktvan
Michael Barber, Digital Marketing Strategist, @michaeljbarber
Kathy Jacobs, Social Media Credit Analyst – The Social Media Party, Kathy@thesocialmediaparty.com, @callkathy
Chuck Reynolds, Strategy & SEO at rYnoweb, @chuckreynolds

For more information go to smcphoenix.com